Cinema as a Tool for Human Rights Education and Reconciliation in Post-conflict Communities, the Lebanese Cinema and the Civil War as a Case Study

Abstract

Since the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948, there have been continuous efforts to spread the concept of Human Rights Education (HRE). Formal tools for human rights education, such as programs and curricula in educational institutions, must be of great importance, but they face challenges in their reachability to diverse groups of society, so it was necessary to resort to informal tools as solutions to such challenges and to bridge this gap. Cinema is one of the most prominent informal tools because of its accessiblity to various segments of society and its educational and historical role in influencing public opinion, spreading awareness and advocating for human rights. This is evident through films that deal with armed conflicts, which gives films importance in the process of reconciliation in post-conflict societies. This research seeks to understand the nature of the relationship between the principles of reconciliation and Human Rights Education and how cinema can advocate for these two principles. The study deals with the case of the civil war in Lebanon and the fictional cinema that dealt with it, to analyse its potentiality in reconciliation and HRE, given that the conflict in Lebanon is one of the most controversial and sensitive conflicts in the region, which always raises the question about the extent to which there is a “real” peace today, after all these years have passed since the end of the civil war.